by Marian Keyes
“Bitch,” muttered Helen, throwing a big pile of my clothes onto the floor.
They had obviously been Belfast-bound.
I’m sorry, boys, I told them. I’ll take you another time.
I heard her go down to the kitchen and shortly afterward there was the inevitable outbreak of raised voices. What was it about her?
Kate was awake in her bassinet, just lying there looking at the ceiling.
“Why didn’t you cry, darling?” I teased her gently. “Why didn’t you wake me and tell me that nasty Auntie Helen was stealing my clothes?”
I picked her up and took her into bed with me, holding her soft warm tiny little body in my arms.
We lay in bed for a while, drifting in and out of sleep, half listening to the sounds of an argument in the kitchen. I really should get up, I thought.
Maybe Helen will mention Adam before she leaves.
I just held Kate tighter. My precious beautiful child.
But then she started demanding to be fed so I got out of bed and quickly got dressed, tripping over the pile of clothes on the floor in the process.
The two of us went downstairs.
Where a little dispute seemed to be in process.
Anna, Mum and Helen were sitting around the table surrounded by breakfast debris, Pop-Tarts and teapots and cereal boxes all over the place.
Mum and Helen were arguing loudly.
Anna was smiling beatifically and doing something peculiar with a daisy and a paper clip.
“I know nothing about any green scarf and gloves,” Mum told Helen hotly.
“But I left them on top of the fridge,” Helen protested. “So what did you do with them?”
“Well, if you’d put them in their proper place you’d know where to find them,” Mum answered her.
“The top of the fridge is the proper place,” Helen replied. “It’s where I always leave my things.”
“Morning,” I said pleasantly.
They all completely ignored me.
For no obvious reason the back door was swinging open and blasts of Siberianesque morning air blew through the kitchen.
This was ridiculous. I had a small child on the premises.
I walked briskly over and, holding Kate with one hand, managed to shut the door and lock it securely with the other.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Anna darkly.
I looked at her in surprise.
I would have thought that it was far too early in the morning, even for Anna, to be all mystical and ethereal.
“Why?” I asked gently, fondly, prepared to humor her. “Is the Goddess of the Morn going to punish me for barring her entrance to our kitchen?”
“No,” said Anna, looking at me as though I had gone crazy. Just then there was a muffled and frantic commotion outside the back door.
Someone or something was very annoyed to find the back door locked.
Lovely language for the Goddess of the Morn, let me tell you. Anna sighed and clumped over and opened the door. Dad stood on the step, almost totally obscured by the huge pile of washing which he held in his arms.
“Who locked the bloody door?” he roared through his armful of jeans and blouses.
“I might have known you’d have something to do with it,” he hissed at poor Anna, as she stood with her hand on the doorknob.
“No, Dad, it was me,” I told him hastily. Anna’s bottom lip had started to quiver and she looked on the verge of tears.
“No, no, because we were cold,” I explained, as Dad fixed me with a wounded look. “Not because I wanted to lock you out.”
My God, what a crowd of neurotics!
I was so normal compared to the rest of my family.
“Right,” declared Dad, throwing all the clothes onto the table, mindless of the half-eaten slices of toast and the bowls of abandoned cornflakes that were already on it. “Which of these clothes do you want?”
“Oh, Helen, why are you so difficult?” sighed Mum. “You have a roomful of clothes up there but the one thing you want has to be in the washing machine or on the line.”
Helen smiled like a little cat. Smirking, she selected a few garments from the mound on the table and handed them to Dad.
“What am I to do with them now?” he asked in surprise.
“But they have to be ironed,” said Helen, sounding equally surprised.
“Ironed?” said Dad. “By me?”
“Are you going to send me to Belfast with wrinkled clothes?” asked Helen, outraged.
“Right, right, right,” shouted Dad, putting his arms up to defend himself from her passionate appeal.
The poor man, he never stood a chance.
Things settled down. Toast started to be eaten, coffee and tea started to be gulped, conversation—and I use the term oh so loosely—started to be made.
“Guess who I’m staying with in Belfast?” Helen asked in an innocent singsong type of voice. She sounded far too casual and blasé.
I knew that tone, and I sensed trouble.
“Who?” asked Anna.
“A Protestant,” said Helen in hushed tones.
Mum continued sipping her tea.
“Mum, didn’t you hear me?” Helen said petulantly. “I said I was staying with a Protestant.”
Mum looked up calmly.
“So?”
“But don’t we hate all Protestants?”
“No, Helen, we don’t hate anyone,” Mum told her, as if she was speaking to a four-year-old child.
“Not even Protestants?”
Helen was determined to have herself an argument, one way or the other.
“No, not even Protestants.”
“But what if I fall under their influence and get all funny and start doing flower arranging?”
Somewhere along the line Helen had picked up some kind of vague and fussy generalization of what Protestants were like.
A funny mixture of Beelzebub and Miss Marple.
They had horns, of course, and cloven hoofs and breathed fire and made their own jam.
“Well, so what if you do,” said Mum pleasantly.
“And what if I don’t go to mass anymore?” gasped Helen in assumed horrified tones.
“But you don’t go anyway,” said Anna, sounding bewildered.
A rather tense and nasty silence followed.
Luckily, Kate, obviously sensing an awkward mood, smoothed things over by starting to cry like a banshee. I felt that she had a great future ahead of her as an ambassador, or working for the United Nations. There was a big rush to prepare her bottle; Anna and Helen practically tripped over themselves to help.
Dad busied himself by getting out the ironing board and making a great production of the ironing, pressing the steam button on the iron until the kitchen resembled a sauna.
Mum sat as though she was made of stone.
But after a while even she became roused to activity. She started to clear the table and grimly threw some cold chewy toast into the trash. Which was a pity because I kind of liked cold chewy toast. But I wasn’t fool enough to cross my mother shortly after she had been notified of one of her daughters’ nonattendance at mass.
Even when the daughter in question wasn’t me.
Things again returned to normal. (Normal being, of course, an entirely subjective concept.)
“What’ll it be like in Belfast. What if I get killed?” Helen mused. “I mean, anything could happen to me. I could get shot or blown up. This could be the last time you’ll ever see me.”
We all stared at her, struck dumb by emotion. Even Kate was silent.
Surely, surely we could never be that lucky.
“Or maybe I’ll be kidnapped,” she said dreamily.
My heart twisted with pity for the imaginary kidnapper. Anyone who kidnapped Helen would be convinced that he had been set up. That she was some kind of awesome secret weapon sent from the other side to destroy him fr
om within.
Nothing frightened her.
She could be chained in some filthy basement with a lean young white-faced fanatic, all wiry muscles and burning eyes, laden with weaponry, and she could start a conversation with him about where she bought her sweater.
Or about anything really.
“I suppose you’ll have to torture me a bit,” she would say offhandedly.
“What’ll you do? I suppose you could cut off my ear and send it in the mail for the ransom money. I wouldn’t mind that too much. I mean, what do I need my ear for anyway? Because I hear with the inside of my ear. Not the outside. Although it would be a bit of a problem if I wanted to wear glasses. If I only had one ear they’d be all lopsided. But I could always get contact lenses. Yes! I could make Dad buy me some of those colored contact lenses. What about brown ones? Do you think I’d look nice with brown eyes?”
And the poor terrorist would be exhausted and horrified by her.
“Shut up, bitch,” he might say.
Although, this being Northern Ireland, “Shot op, botch,” would be more like it.
And she might shut up for a moment or two before she’d be off again.
“These are lovely handcuffs. I have handcuffs too but they’re only crappy old plastic ones. I suppose this must be one of the perks of the job, being allowed to borrow the good handcuffs. You know, to tie your girlfriend up and that. Although it must be a problem when you’ve got a prisoner.
But I wouldn’t mind. You could take them tonight and I promise I won’t try to escape…”
And on and on until the terrorists cracked.
Grown men sobbing uncontrollably, “She’s horrible, horrible! I’ll do whatever you want, but just make her stop.”
Helen would arrive back safely to her home, not only with the ransom money returned untouched, but with a sympathy note for her family from the terrorists.
Anyway she eventually left. Some poor idiot named Anthony had the dubious pleasure of her company on the three-hour drive to Belfast. Off she went, sitting in the front seat wearing a pious expression and clutching a bottle of holy water.
She didn’t mention Adam before she left.
The cow.
Maybe he was going to Belfast also.
Maybe he was already there.
Maybe all the phone lines in Rathmines were down and that was why he hadn’t called me.
Maybe he had been knocked off his bike and was in the hospital with a selection of injuries.
The important thing was that he hadn’t called me.
And he wasn’t going to.
So now what was I going to do?
What I really found peculiar was the way I’d barely given James a thought over the last days. My head had been full of Adam, Adam, Adam.
In the same way that the stewards on the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions of gallons of water, I too was worrying about the unimportant and ignoring the vital.
Sometimes it’s easier that way.
Because although there was little I could do about the huge hole, it was still within my power to empty an ashtray.
A nice analogy.
But the practical consequences of my feeling that way were that I spent Tuesday mooning around the house.
Not mooning in the drunken football team party sense of the word.
Mooning in the feeling miserable and looking tragic sense of the word.
Did I call James?
I’m sorry, but I didn’t.
I was having a bad case of the Self-Pitys.
I was stricken by a particularly virulent form of the Poor-Mes.
No excuse, I realized.
God knows, I wasn’t trying to justify myself.
But I was, I was…I was depressed, goddammit.
twenty
The next day I wasn’t much better.
Jesus! Did you ever meet anyone as self-pitying as me? It was ridiculous and it had to stop.
So I dragged myself out of the bed and tended to Kate. Then I tended to myself. Oh, don’t worry, we’re not going to have a repeat performance of the getting-drunk-and-not-washing-myself senario.
Oh no, things weren’t that bad.
I got through the day.
To be fair, I didn’t achieve anything really impressive.
I didn’t find a cure for cancer.
I didn’t invent run-proof stockings.
And I’m ashamed to tell you that I didn’t even call James.
I know, I know! I’m sorry. I know that I should have. I knew that I was avoiding my responsibilities.
But I felt so empty and lonely.
Sad and alone and all the other emotions coming under the genus “Loss,”
subspecies “rejection.”
Anyway I did get up on Thursday.
Not only that, but I called James.
And I wasn’t even nervous.
I had Adam to thank for that, because I approached calling James with the attitude of “Huh! Don’t think that you’re anything special. Because you’re not. You’re not the only man who can make me feel sad and lonely and rejected. Oh no! There’s millions of others who can do exactly what you did. So there!”
Perhaps not an ideal attitude from a self-esteem point of view, but whatever…at least when I dialed the number in London, my hands didn’t shake and my voice didn’t quaver.
How interesting, I thought.
James no longer had the power to reduce me to a quaking wreck. Well, at least dialing his office number no longer had the power to reduce me to a quaking wreck.
Let’s not get carried away here.
In a confident and steady voice I asked the receptionist in his office in London if I could speak to him. I felt as if London was a million miles away.
As remote as another planet. You’d never have thought that I saw it every evening on the news. The receptionist sounded very far away, very foreign.
Mirroring the way I felt. My life with James had become very far away, very foreign. Or maybe it was because the receptionist was Greek.
Either way, I was perfectly calm as I waited to speak to him.
I mean, what was the big deal?
What did I have to lose?
Nothing.
As someone once said—a miserable, sardonic, misanthropic someone—freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Up until I heard that I’d thought freedom was being able to go swimming when you had your period.
How misinformed I was.
Of course, you believe anything when you’re about twelve.
Did you know that you can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up?
Honestly, it’s true.
And did you know that you can have a baby if you suck the man’s thing?
But the twelve-year-old me knew that would never happen to me because I’d never do anything as disgusting as suck the man’s thing. And I didn’t believe for one moment that anyone, anywhere, would do something so revolting and alien.
I could weep for the innocent child, the idealistic twelve-year-old, that I once was.
Oh, sorry, sorry, you want to know what happened with James.
Oh, didn’t I say?
He wasn’t in.
At a meeting, or something.
And, no, I didn’t leave my name.
And, yes, you’re right if you suspect that I was a bit relieved at not having to talk to him.
But I was in an unimpeachable position.
I’d called him, hadn’t I?
I defy anyone to say that I hadn’t.
Was it my fault that he was unavailable?
No, indeed it was not.
But it meant that I could stop feeling guilty for a couple of hours.
So spirits were high around Thursday lunchtime.
Happily, I picked Kate out
of her bassinet and twirled her around. What a beautiful picture we must make, I thought. The beautiful child being lovingly held by her devoted mother. Kate just looked frightened and started to cry, but never mind.
I meant well. My heart was in the right place, even if Kate’s center of gravity wasn’t.
“Come on, darling,” I said. “Let’s put on our best outfits and go into town and see the people.”
And so Kate and I went into town. I couldn’t, in all conscience, buy any more clothes for me, but I could buy clothes for Kate.
Every day I was finding out more good things about Kate. She continued to enhance every aspect of my life.
I bought her the tiniest, most beautiful denim dress. Even the smallest one was too big for her, but she’d grow into it. It was gorgeous.
And I got her the sweetest little jumper, light blue, patterned with dark blue polka dots and—get this—a matching little jacket with zip front and a hood.
So that she’d fit in if she ever met any cool street kids.
And the socks!
I could go on for hours about the socks I got her. So tiny and fluffy and snuggly and warm and soft, to cover her tiny, tiny, tiny little pink feet. Sometimes I got such a rush of love for her that I wanted to squeeze her so hard I actually feared for her safety.
Then we wandered around a bookshop for a while. My adrenaline started pumping any time I was within about a hundred yards of a bookshop. I loved books nearly as much as I loved clothes. And that’s saying something.
The feel of them and the smell of them. A bookshop was like an Aladdin’s cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look.
So the entire world and life that I chose to enter belonged to someone called Samantha, who apparently “had it all.” A palazzo in Florence, a penthouse in New York, a mews house next door to Buckingham Palace, more priceless jewels than you could shake a stick at, a publishing house or two, a Lear jet, a hot boyfriend, some count or duke or something, and the absolutely essential dark secret and hidden tragic past.
My money was riding on her having been a lesbian prostitute before her luck changed.
I could have bought an “improving book,” I suppose.
Something by one of that Brontë crew. Or maybe even a bit of Joseph Conrad. He was always good for a laugh.
